井底之蛙

There's so much wrong with the way I'm running my life that I don't know where to begin. I miss the days when someone else did it for me. Whether it was parents or the school or even the education system in general, there was always some indication of where to go and what to do next. Of course, the indicated course might not always be the right one, but at least it gave me somewhere to start, a point from which I could slowly fine-tune my final destination and route. And, in the worst-case scenario, if they gave me instructions that were completely off the mark, at least I had an external target at which I could project my frustration and anger. Now that the wheel of the ship has been handed over to me, two things have become immediately noticeable: that there is a whole lot of open ocean, and that there is a whole lot of water beneath the surface. Unlike in the past when I went along a road with a pre-determined path and at most a few branches, now I've been given the option to choose exactly which direction to go towards, and I've become paralyzed with options. And while an accident back in the old days only meant getting up and brushing the dirt off my knees, now it could mean sinking below the surface and never finding my way back again.

I'm the frog that got pulled out of the well and can't get back in.

Not your fault

Sometimes, stuff happens in life which is not your fault, but you still have to pay the consequences anyway. As NSFs this actually happens pretty often, when orders from the higher-ups trickle down until only the most menial and mundane tasks reach us. Outside of army life, things are still the same. It may come as a surprise for you to learn that until now my family is still not done with house-moving, but that's the unfortunate truth.When I went off to Australia about two months ago, they were already in the midst of moving. I had already helped out as much as I could in the days leading up to my departure, and they said that I would most likely be returning home to our new unit. Two months later, I returned to our overcrowded temporary lodging, and our new unit was still covered in dust and unassembled furniture. I thought that all I had to do was reschedule my outings with friends, but apparently that's not good enough because the days on which my father requires my help jump around so much that it's impossible to plan anything around the house-moving, and I end up cancelling everything just to play along with his bipolar schedule.

I have two options. Firstly, I could cry foul and point out how the very least he could do after messing up his deadline and dragging me along to help him was to at least make up his mind over when he wants me to show up. Of course, this ignores how logic is trumped by "I'm you father" any day, and there's no higher authority above him whom I can turn to (my mom has long ago grown fed up with the whole situation and washed her hands from the whole thing). Or secondly, I could just take it in my stride and go through with the whole thing with a positive attitude. Suck up a bit of injustice, and the whole process will roll more smoothly. A fair trade i guess.

My one week of leave seems to be ending too soon. I don't want to go back to camp :(

Not metal

Recently I find that my music taste has mellowed a little, going from metal to more altern-rock or maybe just altern in general.

First up, there's Muse, which I'm beginning to appreciate more and more. The Resistance was a bit of a disappointment though. I'd say my favourite album would be a toss-up between Absolution and Black Holes and Revelations. In any case, here's Map of the Problematique from BH&R:



So now going into the more altern stuff, here's a pretty good song I discovered from a band called MGMT called Kids. I honestly don't know what genre you'd call this:



And finally, here's an altern-hip-hop interpretation of the previous song by Chiddy Bang, rather unimaginatively titled Opposite of Adults (but the song is still good :) ):



Also, while I'm on the subject of embedding stuff, here's a funny webcomic:

Oh, and remember what I said about my music taste mellowing? Yeah, that's probably not true, because I'm totally looking forward to some sweet sweet melodic death metal from Cormorant on 6 December \m/

Watching others tread the same path

There are so many aspects of my life that I could be and should be taking control of right now, but instead leave to one side. My subconscious has not yet fully adjusted to the fact that I am now, sans voting rights, a full-fledged adult with complete responsibilities for my actions and inactions. Am I too used to taking cues from authoritative superiors, or too afraid to set my own directions? Like any good GP essay, the answer is probably between the two extremes.

Speaking of which, this year's 'A' levels started a few days ago, and it's quite nostalgic to see the same panic and anxiety we experienced last year being played out in front of us again by our juniors. I'd like to give them the old "been there, done that" talk about how they really don't have to be as fearful of this exam as they are now, but prior experience tells me that they won't be receptive to talk like that right now. In any case, we all deserve to feel self-pitiful once in a while; to feel like the world is being unfair to us and everyone owes us simply because they're not suffering as much. It's nearly as indulgent as it is saddening.

Post-Wallaby

Yep, I know I've been procrastinating on this post a bit so here it is. I've been back in sunny Singapore for 5 days now, and man does it feel good :)

The last few days of my stay got a bit hectic as everyone was sending in stores and trying to finish backlog while the entire camp itself was scheduled for tearing down. However, the actual tearing down of the telephone wires was actually much easier than expected; all our knots and joints were chosen with fuss-free dismantling in mind, so it's good to see all the skills we learned in SI pay off.

R&R was... OK, honestly, it wasn't all that good. There just simply isn't a whole lot to see or do in Rockhampton. It was a 2D1N affair: the first day was the day we left camp, and the second day was the day we went to the airport. Also, the arranged tourist attraction was a cave. 'Nuff said. Still, my ever-resourceful C4 OIC managed to find some stuff for us to do. We visited a diner that had bull-riding shows on Wednesdays and Fridays (luckily for us it was a Wednesday :D ) and watched in awe as 5-year-old boys rode boisterous little calves and grown men rode tanks with conveniently positioned horns bulls. After that, we went to a little place called Zodiac...

The off system during Wallaby was such that we had to return to camp by 6pm for dinner. As such, we couldn't visit any place after that time. For the most part that wasn't much of a problem since most shops in Australia were closed by 5pm anyway (it's an Australian thing), but one place in particular only opened from 8pm onward, and was the forbidden fruit that everyone talked about. That forbidden fruit was Zodiac, and in short it was a burlesque. And honestly speaking, I think if you ever get a chance to step in there you shouldn't keep your hopes up. The lighting is bad, the music thumps your brain, and lets just say that the women with the necessary muscle mass to twirl around a pole aren't exactly svelte figures...

After touching down in Singapore, I wasted no time in getting in touch with family and friends. Immediately after touching Singaporean soil, I went for a birthday dinner with my family. My birthday present was, of course, coming back to Singapore, but they also surprised me with a HTC smartphone :D You know, that same HTC phone with the trackball that every other NSF is using. Don't have a data plan yet though, so I'll be looking around. Next day we had a 09SH27 outing with 10 people, which is pretty good given previous turnouts. It was a kite-flying/potluck picnic at Marina Barrage, which does sound like a disaster on paper, but it actually turned out pretty well, except that our lunch consisted of biscuits, potato chips, snack buns and biscuits. Dinner was at Marina Square BK, and the rest went off to watch 23:59 while I went home to rest (I came back from Australia with, among other things, a cold). The next day I went to Plaza Singapura Carl's Junior for a belated birthday celebration with the 28 guys (after all, eating at PS Carl's Junior on my birthday has become a sort of tradition), followed by LAN (finally not last place in a game of DotA :D ) and watching the Istana change-of-guard parade, just because it happened to be on.

I've got a week of off till next week, so for now I'll just be chilling :)